Foreigner!
by Siberian Christmas
Summary: Earth's standards for unicorns are not the same as Narnia's. Excommunicated from one place and forced to live in another where he is a complete misfit, Darjeeling wonders if he will ever find a place to call home. Set in the Golden Age of Narnia.
1. Chapter 1

Narnia is of Mr C

_**Narnia is of Mr C.S. Lewis' making, not of my own. All the poems in this story are made by Mr Lewis, not myself; Darjeeling, however, is my own creation**_

_**I wish to dedicate this story to Petraverd and to Lilprincessofthelion, my fellow unicorns at The Lion's Call. **_

**Foreigner! **

**Chapter One**

I burst in through the door, my legs all but failing me. In the gloom my vision went red, the pounding in my ears throbbing to a roar as my entrance caused a hush. I hobbled forward, buckling, sliding. _Don't be sick!_ I told myself. _Don't embarrass yourself, not now!_ I had run so far to escape so much, I couldn't ruin it now!

The next thing I knew with any kind of clarity, many shadowy forms surrounded me, asking questions, gawking. The wheeling lights spun around my aching head. I wanted peace! I wanted safety! I had thought this was the place to find it, but at that moment panic rose up in my belly, and my last mouthful of grass nearly came, too.

"Hullo!" a voice broke through the hubbub and brought my swirling senses to a halt. I looked wearily round my shoulder to see someone standing in the doorway. He was a two-legger, but not a dark-skinned one. All the same, the two-leggers were the ones that could yolk a person, hobble a person, wrench one's horn clean from one's head. I shied.

The two-legger made no move toward me. He had his hand up, keeping the crowd at bay. I began to tremble as he watched me, partly from exhaustion, partly from fear. The blood was still oozing out from around the base of my horn, making hideously morbid lines on my face like some macabre war-mask. For a few moments we stared at each other, neither speaking. I swallowed.

"Who are you, Unicorn?" the two-legger asked.

My throat was too dry to answer. It took all my will not to collapse in an unstallionly heap from sheer weakness.

The two-legger beckoned to another person. "Fetch a bowl for the weary Beast," he said, and promptly his order was obeyed. I shuddered and rocked on my hooves until a large wooden bowl was brought—it had dark carvings on it with the insides lit up here and there where a curve struck the fire's glow, and it seemed to me, in the dizziness, that the carvings were vine-leaves and very beautiful—then I plunged my muzzle unto the clear, fresh water. Diamond-droplets ran from my face as I drank, dissolving the blood. It soiled the water, but right then I didn't care. I had been too hunted to stop for much water or grass, and my body showed the signs of starvation from the desert-trek. My ribs showed where my flanks had once gleamed; my mane was lank and dry where it had once glowed.

"Here, friend, don't drink too much at once; you'll make yourself ill."

I shied again. The two-legger had come up silently on his soft-soled shoes. But he gently took the bowl away from the black-and-white striped creature who held it and gestured for me to speak. "Where did you come from?" he asked again.

I looked round at the faces. I could see again; the sick sensation in my belly was subsiding and the red haze was diminishing. But the question was one I hardly knew how to answer. "I—" my voice hardly sounded like my own, "I came out of Kashmir," I said thickly.

The faces clouded instantly. Simple confusion swept like a shadow over them all, sparking murmurs in their midst.

"It's in the mountains," I explained. "In the mountains—somewhere—in another place." I hesitated and thought hard. I had to make them understand! "It's cold and clear there, and in the winter there's so much snow. The people, they live below me, and sometimes I go to see them at night, with the tiger, and the boa, and we sing songs. Sometimes…sometimes the wolves come too, in great packs, holding councils on the rocks in the jungle. I came out of Kashmir. There's snow on the mountains."

The two-legger touched my cheek gently. "You've had a hard day," he told me sternly. "You're too tired to think clearly. Come along with me, I'll show you where you can lodge."

I drew up a hoof, starting back. "Is it North?" I asked sharply.

The two-legger frowned. "We are in the North," he told me. "This is North."

I don't know what else could have so relieved me. All these past days I had been running madly for the North, hoping to get away from my nightmare. And now…I was there. All my searching was over. I was safe.

I was free.

And yet…it wasn't as sweet as it should have been. Head lowered, I stumbled after him, his hand never leaving my cheek. We went out of the little building, shutting the door to the firelight and the soft murmurs of the others. The gloom of night wrapped its raven wings about us as we walked together, our feet making no noise on the turf. There were many shapes in the darkness which I had not noticed before: the range of black trees to which we went, the shimmering green swell of grass under the cold, clear round moon, the stars gleaming as they had over Kashmir, only different.

"What is it?" asked the two-legger.

I found I had stopped. "The stars," I whispered. "They're not right."

He looked to the heavens with me, and in the dark I heard him smile. "Oh, they're all right, in their own way. It's not really for us to judge, is it? They're celestial, and we're earth-bound."

"Yes," I nodded, moving on. "Yes, I see that."

We entered the wood and went for a distance into it before coming upon a little knoll on which was set a little lodge. I could see, though first I smelt, the softly illuminated curl of smoke rising from the chimney. There was a light coming from the window.

"There," the two-legger told me, "we will be fed and washed and bedded down as if—as if we were kings."

We went into the house, I last, he first, and I got a brief chance to gaze around in the glow of the fire and the lamps. There was a table and a bed, the windows had cloth hanging over them so that the firelight could only peep out into the wood, and so the wood could only peep in. The cloth, like that bundle folded on the top of the table, was white and red in such an orderly fashion! And there was a fur on the floor, which my sore hooves sunk into with delight. There was a trunk, too, in a corner, and perhaps some other things, but I was too tired to take it all in properly.

"Gunnfus," the two-legger called.

Out of a little back door came a little two-legger with a large auburn beard and sparking black eyes. He took one look at me and his mouth came open.

My two-legger chuckled. "We have a weary, wounded guest," he said gently. Drawing me in, he bade me come near the fire so that he could take a look at my horn. And despite the surprise in Gunnfus' face and the haunting feeling that those who are hunted can never quite recover from, I thought I felt the house reach out its arms to me, beckon me, and beg me to belong.

My two-legger pushed my forelock back. The blood came away in a crusty avalanche down my face, falling in a disreputable pile at his feet. He made a little noise in his throat. "Spirits," he said to Gunnfus. Gunnfus instantly disappeared. "Now," my two-legger told me, looking me directly in the eye. "This will hurt."

"I am ready," I said.

When the shorter version of the two-legger stock returned he had a length of cloth in one hand and a bottle of clear liquid in the other. I gritted my teeth. I think, when I tried to take the breath before the pain, I sobbed. I didn't mean to, but it happened all the same. Bracing on my hooves, I held my head down so that my two-legger could go to work purging my horrid gash.

I haven't ever known a physical pain like that one. It was like plunging a fire the width and breadth of a two-legger's hand into my forehead and keeping it there to rake its cruel claws through my flesh. But I stood fast and let him do it. I could not bear to think of losing my horn: it was as bad as losing one's stallionhood.

After a time the pain subsided a little. "It's not as bad as I thought," my two-legger informed me, having washed out the gash. "The horn is still secure. It will heal. Now," he took a blanket from the bed and draped it carefully over my back. "Now, I think you ought to say how you came here."

"I don't know," I said sadly. "I just—don't know."

He regarded me pensively, rubbing his fingers along his chin. Gunnfus was stroking his beard rhythmically. The fire crackled and with a tinselly sound a log collapsed in a shower of sparks.

"I don't know."

"His mind," Gunnfus remarked suddenly, "is as thick as a fen fog."

"I can see that," replied my two-legged with a slight inflection in his tone. His blue eyes burned deeply under their brows. They shone out of the shadows like the stars I had seen in the curious sky. And while the two looked at me I hardly knew myself. It was as though I were detached for a moment from my own body, didn't have a body, didn't have a self. I was so…so tired. I let out a single moan. It brought the flare up out of the blue eyes and a strong hand to my shoulder. "If you can't think clearly," he told me, "let me do the thinking for you. You will rest, you will sleep, you will get your hooves back under you. And when the time is ripe you will tell us who you are and where you came from."

So I was bedded down there in front of the fire, quite forgetting the little building I had come upon in the night, quite forgetting that I had nearly embarrassed myself by being sick in front of all those creatures. I knew nothing but that someone had taken me in and was putting me to sleep, and sleep was all that mattered. Had I been less despairing I would have realized that sleep was the natural descent of the despairing soul, for even in the North my freedom tasted bitter. It was the look Gunnfus had given me.

I knew I was a foreigner.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

When I woke in the morning my mind was much clearer. I think the shock of the spirits had cleared out a great deal of the fever in my head, so I was able to rise and look about me, taking stock of my surroundings.

I was alone. The bed in the corner was made up, the fire was crackling gently under a slowly seeping pot of tea. The cloth over the windows were moving with the wind that came soughing through, a cold edge to it. I shivered and tested my hooves. The overland gallop had done nothing to better their condition, and they were in a sorry, sorry state. I knew that hobbling was the best I could do for a while. _If_, I thought wearily, _my hooves don't get worse. They might give out altogether, and then I will be food for the tigers. I don't suppose they have tigers here in the North, do they?_

I stumbled about the little house, clumsy because I was too large for the enclosure and because my limbs, after the hard run for seemingly endless days and nights, had got horribly stiff during their first rest. They hurt worse than my horn did, and if I weren't as much a stallion as I was, I might have cried at the agony.

My two-legger came to the doorway presently and found me trying out my legs. "Good morning to you," he said.

I nodded back. "Yes, I guess if it's good to be alive, it is a good morning."

He flashed a smile. "Are they so very sore?"

Caught in my pain, I laid back my ears. "Not really," I told him firmly. "I just feel a trifle light-headed."

His eye roved over me carefully before coming back to my face. I think he could tell I was in great pain, but he said no more about it. Coming in, he laid his cloak down on the table and leaned cock-eyed on a chair. "Are you level-headed enough to tell me about yourself?" inquired he.

"I am level-headed enough," I replied, "but it's the heads and the tails I can't make out. I know about as much of where I've come from as you do."

"Oh, you might be surprised," my two-legger told me. His blue eyes had lost their hard burn and were twinkling almost merrily. "I asked a Stag last night and he said he'd seen you running up from the northwest bend of the Archen River." His face suddenly grew serious. "He told me you were flying like the wind through a desert gorge, almost spent, but had the heart to reach the ends of the earth. What made you run like that?"

I swallowed. "Promise me," I begged him in a rasping voice that still didn't sound like mine, "promise me you will never make me go back to that place."

"What place?" he asked, eyes narrowing. The burning came back.

Gunnfus stumped into the doorway. "Sir," he said bluntly.

I was diverted from my answer by his stern face and tone. In one hand he held a horn, in the other he held a bow and quiver. One of his big booted feet was tapping impatiently.

My two-legger pressed his fingertips against his temples with a soft moan. "Of course, Gunnfus, yes, I am coming." He took the items from the little person, but turned at the doorway. I knew he was going to speak, and watched with a checked heart as the hesitant expressions ran one after another over his face. "Noon," he said finally, and walked out the door.

_Noon_. I hobbled to the window and looked at the sky. It was still very early morning; the sun had barely got through the trees. The lawn was grey with dewy gossamer; the sound of horses' hooves on the ground drummed dully in the air. I could not see round the edge of the house from where I stood inside, but I thought I caught the merest glancing of a cloak on the breeze.

Noon. Having a whole morning to myself in my new lodging, I wondered what to do with myself. I didn't dare go out on the lawn. The cover of night now gone, I felt a curious sensation the two-leggers would term _naked_. I backed away from the window and went to the fire.

A bang at the door startled me terrible. "Hullo!" I cried, lowering my horn before I realized it was Gunnfus. I had thought he had gone out with my two-legger but, by all appearances, he hadn't.

"You put that horn away," he told me sternly. "I'm popping out now; can you manage on your own?"

I frowned. "Of course I can manage," I assured him. But watching him go, though I didn't much care for his sternness and that look he had first given me, I felt terribly betrayed and alone. I felt like an animal in a cage, but still I didn't dare walk out that door.

So I was alone. I had made it but had nothing to show for my short-lived triumph except four cracked hooves and a hacked horn. The house, I quickly found, was not suited for equines, so I pottered about as carefully as I could like some mechanical creature on my stiff joints, poking among the trunk and crannies to amuse myself. I inspected the little door I had seen Gunnfus come out of the night before, and having got the latch off, pulled it open with my teeth to see beyond. It was a little stone room, quite cool and shadowy, with a distant scent of moss lingering around my hooves. And then I picked up a new, sharp, pungent smell that first surprised me, then intrigued me. I entered.

Little light could get in through the doorway, so I had to step aside and twist my head one way and get a proper idea of the room. It was large enough to hold me comfortably, though the chill was too much for my throat, and I found that the strong smell was coming from a body that rustled and shifted in the shadows.

"Hullo?" I asked softly.

No one answered. I went in a little further and peered closer. Then I found, to my propounded surprise, that it was nothing but a cow. She gazed up out of the darkness at me with a languid smile and silly, dark eyes. I left her to her hay and went back into the front room. I began to feel very depressed with my surroundings. What was the use? I had traded one cage for another. A dark cloud settled over my spirit.

I spent much of the morning in a half-doze by the sinking fire. I kept off my feet as much as I could. Then I found I had really dropped off to sleep, waking with the sun slanting into the west. Jumping up, I trotted uneasily to the door to peer out in the bitter hopes that my two-legger had returned.

There was no sign of him. The lawn was silent save for a wind that had got lost on it and took its time in the dancing by. There had been a time, I considered, when I could dance like that, but not now, perhaps not ever again. I pricked my ears to hear any sound of hoofbeats coming near. He _had_ said noon, he had, I knew it! But it was past the noon hour already and—I got a horrid notion that he had come while I had been sleeping and gone on somewhere else already. The world was a big place and there were many toils in it. Surely he must be a busy person with more cares than a strange unicorn. I was tempted to be stung by that; I was an egotistical creature; most unicorns are to some degree. But I had been under the impression that the two-legger was the sort to really care. I had been proved wrong.

Lost in my desperation, I was startled by a scampering, wicking sound in the bushes near the door. I jumped and lowered my horn instinctively, calling out, "What, ho! Who goes there?"

A curious little creature with curiously big, black eyes popped its head out of the bush. With a little worm and wiggle it came out fully, flinging a great fluffy tail over its back. It was of a rust-like colour, rather warm and—wick, I guess I could say. Alive. But it was so strange and like nothing I had ever seen before. Like a reddish-brown rat. I raised a hoof, ready to ward it off if need be. "What on earth—!"

It laughed in a high-pitched tone. "Hullo," it said cheerily.

I lowered my hoof warily. "Hullo. If—if you don't mind my asking, what are you?"

Its silly pointed ears tipped back and forth for a moment. "Well," it replied, "I'm a Narnian."

My tongue tied up on the word. "Beg pardon, a what?"

It chortled. "A Narnian."

"A what?" I retorted. Meaningless words shed no illumination when repeated idiotically. I began to guess the creature was not all right in the head.

So, seeing I didn't understand, it got up on its hind legs, crumpled its little fists as it stretched as high as it could—it came hardly higher than my fetlock—and bawled in its unoiled, tiny voice, "A _Narnian_!"

I bawled back down at it, "Yes, I heard you. What does that mean? What do you do? Where do you live? What sort of species is a Narnian?"

It took a long, confused look at me, then shook its head as though to clear it. I began to wonder—it was an unpleasant thing to wonder—whether it was _I_ who was the idiot. Being the bigger of the two I, of course, had the upper hoof, but when it came to a battle of wits the little flighty creature might be able to beat me, since I still felt tired and worn. Talking to it was not going to be a flick of the tail.

"So," it said, hesitantly, "what's your name?"

"Darjeeling," I told it solemnly. "Darjeeling Seymour Khan."

"Terrible mouthful," it said.

"Not really," I replied.

"Yes, it is."

I frowned. "Well, then, what's _your_ name, if you're so eager to trample mine?"

"Nutkin," it said cheerily, getting up and doing a swift dance on its hind paws.

"You don't have a family name?" I inquired. "How do you tell yourself from the other Narnians? Presuming there _are_ other Narnians."

It skittered in a rabid circle and twitched its tail to the raucous tune of an unnatural cackle. "Of course there are other Narnians! But we're not stuck up; we've only got one name apiece."

At that, I believe, I got really angry. I knew I wasn't from around here, I knew I was an alien, but this impish little creature needn't go shoving the naked sensation of _being_ alien right in my face! I stomped both my forehooves and nearly screamed, "How dare you malign my name? My people are renowned throughout the forest! The wolves come ask of our wisdom! Get out of here, you wretch! Leave me to the one spot of ground I'm allowed."

The Narnian ran back a distance at my outburst, flashed its tail in the sunlight a few times, then scampered away, shrieking as it went. And then, when the silence fell between me and the forest, I began to feel horrid. I shouldn't have lost my temper; now I was even more alone than before. "Don't go," I whispered to the wind and the little creature called Nutkin. "I'm sorry, don't go." But of course no one heard my whisper, and the Narnian didn't come back.

Among my people, a noble death is more desirable than a shameful life. I discovered that I had threatened a little wisp of a thing, something that, physically, had no chance against my horn and hooves. I, Darjeeling Seymour Khan, pride of my father's heart, had lost all dignity, all kindness.

A hot tear gathered at the corner of my eye. "They made me one of them," I whispered. "The two-leggers turned me into the very thing I hated: a slave, a coarse, witless, evil thing. How devilish!" I stomped again. My hoof on the flagstones crashed, bringing back the hordes of memories of chains and darkness, jeers, eyes, black lips around white teeth. I would rather face the hungry tiger than go back into that horror. And now…I lowered my head. I had become that horror. I had been whipped enough to know how to whip back.

I lifted my hoof. Underneath the flagstone had been broken into several useless pieces. "Oh, woe!" I cried madly. "Can I do nothing now but destroy? Better I ended it all now."

With a resolved shake of my black mane I hobbled out of the doorway and struck out across the lawn. The sun was beginning to fall into the west, dying red over the horizon. To it I turned. Instinct told me there was wilderness out there, vast stretches of unpopulated land where I could lose myself. And as I went the chill of twilight swept around me, welcoming me in as though I were entering my tomb.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

I kept to the softer, grassy places of the wood. Weary as I was, I could not make fast progress, especially as night was coming on and I was in a strange place. The chief thing that drove me was the feeling of eyes upon me, and talons, cruel talons, reaching out to grasp me. I sought my freedom in my death; afterwards nothing could capture me again.

As the night grew deeper I began to perceive noises afar off. They were steady, rhythmic noises like drums, or hooves. At first I thought there was a storm coming up, but a glance at the sky told that all was clear and cold. So I knew it must be more of the people I had met in the little building, perhaps even people like that Narnian named Nutkin. But wanting to keep away from other people I made a wide, slow course around the noises and went on until I could no longer hear them. Sometimes I heard an owl flying overhead, or heard the brush snap behind me, but it was no more than usual night-noises the like of which one got used to in the jungle. Time went by and I fell to walking in a doze. Dreams of snowy mountains flitted through my dazed mind. Hungry, weary, spooking, I wandered on, not knowing or caring where I went.

But it must have been near midnight, I suppose, when a flurry of hooves broke the stillness around me. I halted, jumping out of my sleep, to see who came. For once I was glad of my jade-and-emerald coat for I did not glow against the dark backdrop as much as pure white would. So hiding in the shadows I watched as a horned animal sprang by, legs brittle as ice, bounding with a shimmering white tail through the wood. Then all was silent again. The stag was gone like a dream, shattering my world.

"Where am I?" I asked myself. "What am I doing?"

I had no answer to that, except the conclusion that I must be ill. I turned in a circle once, or twice, I can't say, then pitched down in the bracken in a dead sleep.

Curious how dreams come when least expected, and least wanted. Through the gloom walked Nasha and Sori. I scrambled to my feet, terrified. "Hold your ground!" I cried.

The two wolves stopped and stared at my horn, then at my feet. The sight of a unicorn with its ears nearly lost along the hard line of its skull is not to be taken lightly and, troublemakers as they were, Nasha and Sori were not complete fools. But it was my turn on the watch and I would not let the spring foals be carried off.

"You have no business here," I told them. I gave a little warning jump forward, snatching at the air with my hooves. "Be gone!"

"There's but one of you," Sori told me, "and two of us. Plus we are hungry, and determination is worth more than you give it credit."

"Go steal chickens in the two-leggers' villages," I told them. "I am Khan, you will bow before me!"

They replied with barks of laughter. Those of the barbaric, younger generation in the wolf-kind were not acquainted with the laws of the jungle, nor did they have respect for rank and royalty. "The Khans are dead," said they. "They are a thing of the past. Go to sleep and dream with your fathers. The progeny of the unicorns is for us!"

I flung myself at them, lashing with my hooves and horn. Almost at once they darted into the shadows, knowing for all their words that I was too much for them. But my heat was up and I tore after them, galloping through the undergrowth, swallowing the ground while my anger burned a red film over my pulsing viridian eyes. We unicorns were the holy creatures of the jungle, and these insolent scrawny sons of bitches would learn what it meant to raise the ire of a prince.

So through the black jungle I chased them, deep into the heart of our solitude. Somehow we got upon the mountains and ran round and round the huge rocks, climbing higher and higher toward the ancient pagan temples. Bucephalus himself must have been with me that night as I flew over the rugged terrain, snapping at the whisking tails. But then the wolves were gone and I—going too fast to stop my career—flung full into an empty gulf at the bottom of which surged a deep, deep river. I tried to cry out but the cry lodged in my throat.

Down I went. The shock of the water was overpowering so that I didn't know myself until much later when I was washing up against a silver shore somewhere far from home. "The children!" I cried, shaking the water out of my mane and tail. Like a madman I raced along the brink, looking hither and yon for some means of escape. But the bank had suddenly become a cliff down which I dared not throw myself, not again. I wondered how deep this fissure went. Despairing, I turned around and ran into the heart of the island—it was an island—and came almost in a heartbeat upon a city. It glowed blue, like the panther's eyes, and it was empty. So empty was it that I stopped, listening for any sound of a breath, the merest tremor of a heartbeat. Nothing stirred.

Of a sudden, a great light shone beside me. I wheeled on my hooves—I was no coward—and struck at the figure I saw there. But my hooves went through it. My courage almost failed when I thought it was a ghost. But the figure spoke my name, laid over me as if it were a death-shroud a great spell, and out of the city, the gulf, the mountain, the jungle, I was torn.

I started up with a scream of panic. Out of the darkness loomed two big golden eyes. I was not fully awake, but sensing danger I struck out with my hooves in a rage, trying to put those hellish eyes out. They bobbed, dodged, and disappeared before I could strike them, and popped up in a new quarter. Spinning, I plunged in among the undergrowth.

"I'll tear you to shreds, you incorrigible dastard!" I cried. "I'll pound you into this hateful soil! I'll teach you to stare at the Khan!"

The big gold eyes were followed by a frightened wailing as I thrashed around after them. Incoherent gibberish babbled at me from under the bushes and then, as the eyes darted up a tree, from above my head. Seeing it for the first time in the pale light of the moon, I realized that it was a cat. A very small wild sort of cat. I paused, uncertain.

Its little chin wobbled. "Are you going to kill me?" it asked.

I blew through my nose. It was just a little cat; could it really do so much harm? But then I recalled that the Narnian was much smaller than the cat, and at once my ears lay back against my skull.

"Give me a reason not to," I retorted.

The little creature's chin wobbled all the more. It wasn't cheeky like the Narnian, nor gruff like the short two-legger. In fact, I could honestly say it was a simple-minded, almost stupid animal. "I haven't had my supper?" it suggested.

I sighed. "Well, neither have I," I replied. "Do you eat unicorns?"

"No, sir." The chin continued its incessant wobbling.

"Well, what's your name?"

"M—M—Minkle?"

I tried my tongue around the name and found it curious, difficult, but enjoyable to say. I suppose that had a great deal to do with my decision. "Come on down, Minkle; I won't kill you."

It wouldn't have made any noise coming down except that it would insist on whimpering all the way. I think I had nearly frightened it out of its skin, for when it got down it kept right up against the bole of the tree with one paw round it in case I should make any sudden or threatening moves. There was nothing about Minkle that was not comical. His fur was bushy and ill-combed, though it was not unclean, his eyes were vacant and always surprised, and there was a manner in which he spoke that was as simple as the spring breeze and just as babyish. I felt instantly ashamed of myself for rushing blood-drunk after this tiny little thing. I crept forward gingerly on the edges of my worn hooves, careful not to startle him while trying to get a clearer look at him.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I told him plainly. "I am dreadfully sorry; I just woke up from a bad dream."

"What's _your_ name?" asked Minkle shyly.

I blinked and eyed the grass at my feet. "Why, it's—it's Darjeeling," I said slowly, listening to how hollow and foreign the syllables sounded in the dark, moonlit wood. I didn't bother giving the rest of my name; it would only confuse the poor creature.

Its big eyes got bigger with astonishment. "That's a big name," it breathed. "Where did you get it?"

"I—" a laugh broke out of my nose, "I was born with it. What about you? Weren't you born with your name?"

"I don't know," replied Minkle. "I don't recall being there at the time."

I shook my head from side to side. _Poor, stupid little thing,_ I mused. I decided to start out on something it might know. "Are you lost?"

Minkle removed his paw from the tree and snuggled up against it like a baby against its mother's side. "Not in the forest," he told me confidently. "I know it too well."

For a moment all thought of suicide departed from me. "And what else do you know?"

The bushy, rather idiotic looking cat wiggled forward on its hind legs—wiggled, with a strange caterpillar-like motion—and stared up at me with gigantic eyes of pure amazement. "I know you're the most beautiful critter I've ever seen, sir. Can I be your friend?"

I believe that was the first moment in my life when someone actually _asked_ to be my friend. The lilting, babyish words hung in the air and, their chords gone, left a horrible empty ache in my chest. _It isn't for you_, I told myself. _You don't belong here, or there, or anywhere. You've broken into someone else's dream and when they wake up—oh! when they wake up!—you'll be shattered all to pieces. _

"I—I don't know, Minkle," I stammered fitfully. "I can't say."

He gave me back an open-faced, honest look of sorrow. I didn't know if I wanted him to be my friend, I didn't know if I wanted _anyone_ to be my friend. I was caught in the distrust that had sprung up out of my own defensive behaviour, my knowledge of my alien nature, and my almost overwhelming desire to have a belonging place. But Minkle didn't know any of this, only that I had said, in all appearances, _no_. He was crushed.

I lowered my head with a sigh. "What are you doing out here at night?" I asked as gently as I could.

"Watching you," he replied shyly.

I lay down with the glow of my horn making a soft sweep of gold in the young cat's eyes. Pulling my legs up under my body, I shifted into the grass. "I am going back to sleep now," I said. "Good-night. And don't get lost."

But Minkle padded over, braver than the bravest, and snuggled into the hollow of my flank. He was so small, I could have crushed him if I rolled over, but it startled me terribly to see him creep up and brush his fur against my coat as if he were getting into his own bed. "I—uh—I—" I fumbled for something to say.

Minkle sighed deeply and began sucking on his paw. Little babyish noises began to murmur in his throat as he whispered himself to sleep.

I put my head down next to him, casting my pale green-gold light around him. "Good-night, Minkle," I whispered.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

I woke in the morning with an odd taste in my mouth and the suspicion that Minkle had left me in the night. But when I opened my eyes I saw him there still, his paw tucked into his mouth comfortably, his back legs curled up so that the paws hung down on either side of his ears. He was a comical, ridiculous excuse for a cat. I rose and shuddered the grass off my coat, then stood above him, peering down, unconsciously the way a mare stares down at her sleeping foal.

"Hullo," I whispered, prodding him with my nose. "Morning time."

Minkle hiccupped and rolled onto his side.

I blew all over him and nudged his paw out of his mouth. With a desperate whimper he snatched it back and plunged it into his mouth again with a curious _muop!_ sound.

I frowned. Very well, if he wanted to be that way… I turned and trotted away into the undergrowth. The sun—

_whose ore also, in earth's matrix,_

_is print and pressure of his proud signet_

_on the wax of the world_

—was rising in the east, setting the forest canopy into a showering glory of amber and emerald so that above my head appeared to be a peacock-wing set aflame, like a great viridian phoenix with its pinions spread across the land. The tall pine trunks that formed the columns of my wide sylvan room were still dark, like smoked pillars, age-blackened rafters. My carpet was fern, short, crowded hawthorn, thickets of bramble and honeysuckle, blackberry, blueberry, great swaths of lords-and-ladies all afire (so I knew it must be September) and it became my grudging palace.

_I will be Khan here_, I whispered, pausing to speak to the little dawn-wind that came rushing by in the moss. But still, the place was hollow when I recollected my vast kingdom full of mysterious jungles, the distant cries of other animals, the huge moon hanging like a Ceylon pearl behind the ghost-scape of ruined temples on the mountains. There was majesty and deity in those woods; here there was only simplicity, the sensation of being a creature, not a master. Pride plucked a discontented chord inside my chest.

I moved on again, climbing up and down the little hills and hollows that rolled unseen beneath the forest garb, and all the while the sun rose a little higher until even the pine trees were illuminated. Through my new castle I galloped, round and round through the flashing green growth, hardly making a noise, for unicorns are like spectres. The moss aided my weak hooves; I began to doubt they would cease to be functional altogether. So I spent the morning scouting out my new realm. It was beautiful in its own way, I admitted that, but everywhere I turned there was still that lingering feeling that the jungle was just beyond the next pine tree, just over the next dell. But it was never there. It mocked me, taunted me, and I found my legs wearying and slowing up until, at last, I was halted by a noise.

Unicorns, too, have excellent hearing, and I began to hear the soft patter of feet on the ground: a triple thunder on the turf. It was coming up the hill nearest me, and stepping into the shifting shadows—again, thankful for a moment of my shimmering green coat—I waited to see who came.

The mockery! At once rage and frustration swept like a hot river through my body. Standing on the hill-crest not far off was a white—a _white_—unicorn, forehoof drawn up as she glanced around, pawing at the air. Her huge luminescent eyes glittered in the light-and-shadow of the wood as though all the cataracts of space wheeled within them. Her horn shone still yet a thousand more cascades of the captured heavens, gleaming up and down and up again as she turned her head. For one moment my eyes were blind and I might have rushed at her before she knew what was in the wind and run her through with my horn, for she was in my palace and I was a jealous khan. Yet something held me still.

"Hullo?" she called. She stood a hesitant step forward. "Is someone there?"

I kept motionless, holding my breath. But it was not enough; for she heard the soft intake I made and gave a tiny, delicate jump to one side, looking near where I stood. "Someone _is_ there! Hullo? Are you all right?"

It was one thing to face the little Narnian called Nutkin, and one thing to face baby Minkle, but it was another thing entirely to face a nearly full-grown unicorn. They could do damage, and even in my anger, once I got my head back, I knew I couldn't harm a lady.

She began to approach, peering into the shadows. "Hullo?" she pleaded, as if her voice would draw me out. I smiled grimly: _Like poison from a wound_. I made no move, willing her to pass me by. She kept her head up, ready to fly at the merest sign of danger. But she kept coming, inching closer, one delicate hoofstep at a time. Her legs were so thin I could have looped my neck around one and, with a jerk, broken it like a twig. Her tail danced agitatedly around her hindquarters as she advanced, eyes dilated in confusion and timorousness. And she began to be very frightened, too, for she could sense I was not far off, yet I was nigh invisible in the green and gold and shadows.

"Are you a ghost?" she asked.

I almost laughed outright.

"Please," she begged again, "don't play hide-and-seek. Where are you—oh!" She jumped in shock, for she had finally found me. I laid back my ears and stared down at her, my eyes daring her to make a move. I thought she would have fled but she didn't. She stood trembling and blinking, then said, "I am sorry."

"For what?" I asked.

She looked this way and that, still blinking, as though her thoughts had fallen out and she was trying to find them again. "I—I hardly know. I just—am."

"Now do you know," I asked in a low tone, "why I didn't come out?"

She nodded, silvery cheeks aflame with embarrassment beneath the coat. I felt a little sorry for her myself, but mostly I just wanted to be left alone. She kept her eyes on my hooves while she spoke. "Badger told me he had seen you. I thought—I didn't think—he never said that you were—I _am_ sorry!"

I snorted through my nose in derision. "So am I, ma'am. So am I, more than you know." I made a move to walk off.

"Where are you going?" she asked, trotting after me.

I was about to answer _to be alone_ when a little crying voice was borne to us on the wind. "Darjeeling! Darjeeling! Where are you? Where are you?"

The other unicorn started. "Oh! That's Minkle, poor thing! What's he got into?"

The voice cried on, full of tears. The agony in the tone filled my soul. _That was what I was crying to myself! Where is myself?_ I broke into a swift canter, the other unicorn coming after me, and followed the voice through the forest until I found Minkle sitting forlornly on a log, bawling his eyes out with a puddle of tears around his paws.

As soon as I came into view, the cat flung himself from his perch and entwined himself around one of my forelegs. "Darjeeling!" he wailed. "Why did you leave me?"

I felt his tears running down my leg. He clung to me as though he had had a bad dream, as though dogs were after him. I swallowed. "I—I couldn't wake you," I replied with an edge to my voice.

"The poor baby!" the other unicorn cried, nuzzling Minkle's fur. "You poor, poor thing! It's okay, he's here now. Stop fussing. Shh…shh…"

He stopped eventually, but not after he had wiped his nose on my knees several times. Then he slid down and landed with a thump on his rear and sat gazing up at me worshipfully.

The other unicorn raised her head and looked at me. I was a little bigger than she, so she had to look up to see my face. With little trouble I was able to tip my head and gaze before myself, not meeting her gaze.

"If you don't mind my saying so," she began, "you're rather cold."

Minkle shivered in the breeze. "It _is _kind of chilly."

We ignored him for the moment. I made no answer, she continued to stare.

"Why?"

"Because," I snapped, "the world is a cruel place and one gets hurt less if one holes up in a castle of ice. Didn't you know that, or do you live in a utopian world full of orchids and hyacinths?"

She didn't know enough of my world to understand what I said, but from my tone and eyes she knew fully well what I _meant_, and that was enough. "So, you're quite safe. You won't come out to test another person, not ever, so yes, you're quite safe. Take no chances! Coward."

I whirled on her, horn levelled before I had a chance to regain my mind. "I have spitted more wolves on my horn than you have summers to your name," I told her bitterly. "I once defended the progeny of my people and the forests of my kind. I was Khan then."

"What is khan?" she asked.

I sighed. "It is lord, ruler, prince or king. I was a prince then, before—"

Minkle and the unicorn leaned in to hear. "Before what?" the cat asked excitedly.

I turned my head away so they couldn't see my face. "I had never been touched by humanity, either virgin or otherwise. I was a free unicorn in my land. But then, one night, something inexplicably horrible happened. All my magic dissolved in the face of some enchantment and I was thrown—bodily thrown—into another place, a cruel place full of black faces and leering eyes, people who wanted my green hide for money, my strength for work, my horn for a treasure." I turned back and tossed my forelock away. The two gasped at the fissure at the base of my horn. "I was able to break free before they took it from me," I went on. "But they were the sort of people to hack one away until there was nothing left: take my mane and shear it to make plumes for their helms, dock my tail to make fly-whips, saw off my horn and make a quiver out of it, take my stallionhood and make me slave."

The other unicorn blushed and looked pitiful. I didn't want her to say it; I didn't want her pity, but the wind, that still small autumnal wind, brought to me her almost inaudible words: "I am sorry."

"But you got away," Minkle interrupted joyously. He hugged my legs again, his big eyes enraptured. I was, somehow, his hero. His little fluffy, pointed tail patted the ground happily. "You got away!"

"Yes," the other unicorn breathed. "You did, thanks be to Aslan."

"I have my life," I admitted, "and yes, that is something, but it is a bitter life to be sure."

The other unicorn frowned. "Why do you say that?"

I disengaged myself from Minkle and took a hard step backward. "Look at me!" I cried. "And look at you!"

Minkle twisted his head back and forth to see us both but, simpleminded as he was, he didn't detect the difference. But the other unicorn did. She sighed and shook her mane. "Is _that_ the measure of your sorrow: that you don't look like me?"

"Why should he look like you?" inquired Minkle. "Then I'd not be able to tell you apart."

"Darling, you're quite right," the unicorn threw him a wink, then faced me again.

She didn't understand, did she? I stared in resigned bewilderment at her, not knowing how to explain myself. How did I explain that it was fear of being hurt beyond healing? How did I tell myself that I already _had_ been hurt, perhaps beyond healing? How did I tell her—and Minkle—that I daren't try to open myself? Ice was the only fortification I had left.

It was quiet. Morning birds were calling in the trees, the wind was sighing. Then Minkle observed to the little bobbing head of clover between his paws, "I don't like turtles." And it was quiet again.

"What is your name?" I asked, breaking the silence at last.

The unicorn tossed her head. "Michaelmas."

"Michaelmas?"

"Yes, for the Michaelmas daisy. Ever heard of it?"

I shook my head. "Afraid not. It is a pretty name, though."

She danced delightedly, all her melancholy forgotten in an instant. "My father's name was Red Admiral, so he called me Michaelmas. The Red Admiral," she explained, "is a butterfly, and it loves the Michaelmas daisy. Don't they have Michaelmas where you come from?"

I was struck by the realization that, regardless of the implausible nature of my adventures, she didn't seem to think it odd that I had come out of another place into this one. She seemed to except it as truth, perfectly fine truth, if not exactly normal. "No, not a bud," I admitted. But from that moment I imagined the Michaelmas daisy as being as light, skittish, delicate and gay as the little unicorn before me.

The little specks of gold in her eyes glittered with her smile. "Oh, that's a pity! But I am guardian here, did you know that?"

I looked jealously about my new palace. "Are you?" I asked listlessly. "How wonderful."

She made an O-shape with her lips, catching the monotone in my voice. "You—you must have seen much of it while you were running about."

I glanced back over her. "You don't look like a guardian much," I remarked dryly.

Her ears twitched backward a fraction. She shivered like a struck bird, drew up rigid, and poised with a hoof in the air. A wild thing she was, hovering on the edge of flight: beautiful and graceful, her melting eyes full of the summers she had lived, the depths of countless pools, the ageless majesty of our—her—kind. "Would you have me be big and ugly and broad as an ox?" she inquired, settling her hoof to earth again. "Then I would look like a guardian. It is a well-known fact that things are not—"

"—Always what they seem," I ended wearily. "A very well-known, overtaxed fact, yes. But if things are not always what they seem, how can we trust them at all? There is such a thing as objectivity."

Michaelmas nodded solemnly. "Of course, one would be a fool to deny that. But things are not always what they are completely at one time. What if I were female, unicorn, warrior, guardian, racer, dreamer all at once? I could never do it! Darjeeling—" she hesitated. "Khan, we are like a jewel—flawed, more often than not, and terribly so but jewels indeed—and one sees different facets of us at different times. True, I am female and unicorn at once right now, those two things I can't help being. But my warrior side, my guardian side, my dreaming side, are—sleeping right now, so to speak. Well," she tossed her head, "perhaps not my dreaming side so much. Do you see?"

I narrowed one eye warily. "Are you a poet?" I asked.

Michaelmas danced with laughter, her hooves hardly touching the ground. "Oh, you flatter me, silly!" she cried. Her eyes danced gaily from under her long soft lashes. "But you _do_ see. That was the male equivalent of a positive answer, I know." She tossed another wink at Minkle, who sat by too simple to be confused by the large metaphysics floating above his ears.

I shook my black mane with a shrill whinny. It was the first time that sound had come out of my throat in…a very long time. Then I blew hard through my nose and stomped on the ground. "Very well!" I cried. "I am satisfied."

"Then, if you don't mind," replied Michaelmas with a shimmering smile, "I'd like to show you to someone." She turned and took a few dainty steps away before looking back to see if I would follow.

I woke Minkle out of his reverie in the moss. "Hullo, we're leaving," I said. "Climb on my back and come along, if you want." I felt guilty about leaving him again, especially after his big tears.

But Michaelmas gave me a curious look. "He's going to ride you?" she asked, a slight high inflection in her tone.

I raised a brow. "Why shouldn't he?" The hair along the crest of my neck spiked in anxiety: I feared I had done something dreadful without knowing it.

Michaelmas shook herself. "It's nothing. Just cultural difference, I suppose, but not serious. Nothing _bad_."

Minkle scrambled up on my back. "See, around here," he informed me, "people don't dream of riding on unicorns. I think you're peachy." He kneaded his paws into my mane and purred loudly, blissfully infantile.

"Pardon me," I said a trifle sharply. "I just didn't think Minkle could keep up, that's all."

"Of course. You've got a big heart," Michaelmas told me. She smiled and broke into a canter while I, aghast that my ice-walls were coming down, clenched my jaw on the wake of a curse and followed after her.

We went on through the wood as the sun rose higher, and it was about noon when we halted. I paused beside Michaelmas, looking about warily. In the sunlight I did not recognize where I was until she took a step forward and parted the undergrowth. "See? There!" And the tone of her voice was one of pride and love.

I found myself looking at a cottage on a grassy knoll, the oak and ash behind it leaning down their huge boughs to cast soft shadows around its stone-wall feet. It was light, it was beautiful; distant and beautiful.

"Lovely," I said dully.

Michaelmas frowned. "Don't you like it?"

"Oh yes," I assured her. "It's beautiful."

But then Michaelmas gave an excited shiver and said, "Oh! Do listen!" So I listened and heard a deep, husky voice singing rather absently,

_We'll turn again in triumph and by crannies and by crevices_

_Go back to where the capitol and cradle of our people is,_

_Our forges and our furnaces, the caverns of the earth—_

_ (Gold! Fire! The anvil and the smithying)._

Michaelmas shivered as if a hand had swept over her coat and tickled it. Her big lustrous eyes—I thought they were purple at times, like a dove's wing—glowed with delight. "My master is at home," she said, and struck out across the open.

I watched her go with a heavy heart. Her hoofstep was one of freedom, and though she spoke of a master, I knew no one could chain her up. She was a wild thing, and the only way to truly own a wild thing was to capture its heart, not its body. Michaelmas was happy. I had no place in her wood, I, the heavy, dull-hoofed green unicorn with glazed eyes that glowed, not like her eyes, but like unflawed, smooth jewels caught in the fire. The disparity between us was sickening. I turned away.

"What? Aren't we going?" asked Minkle, disappointed.

I gave him a wry smile. "You can go, Minkle," I told him. "I—I don't belong there."

More amber tears gathered along the rims of his eyes as he sat on my back, gazing at me in bewilderment. He didn't understand my trouble; he just knew I wasn't coming. For a moment I thought of screaming at him the way I had screamed at the Narnian called Nutkin—it had sped him on his way—but I knew it would have crushed Minkle beyond repair. _He's just—just a baby_, I thought despairingly. _And he always will be_.

A voice broke over the knoll. "Minkle!" it called. "Darjeeling Khan!"

Through the boughs I could see my two-legger standing on the stone threshold with Michaelmas peering out over his shoulder. I couldn't see his face clearly, but I knew he was looking at me, his eyes disappointed and grey like the sea under scudding storm-clouds.

"Come get your dinner before it goes cold!"

I was going to get hurt, I told myself as my hooves mechanically went into action. There was no fire in me now as I walked out of the woodshore and ascended the gentle incline of the knoll. I was going to get so horribly, horribly hurt.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

I reached the doorway and stood gazing down at my two-legger, making sure my eyes betrayed as little of my feelings as possible. Michaelmas danced with her hooves making a jolly tattoo on the stone floor. "He said you would come," she breathed happily. "Come in, please, come in! It's not terrible."

I was let in without having to say a word. My two-legger gently took Minkle down from my back, left, and came back with a basin. He carefully poured it nearly full of warm water from the kettle and motioned me over. "Let me have a look at your hooves, Khan."

He sat his broad frame down and hunched himself over my hoof, his big kind hands taking it firmly in and running expertly, ticklishly, over its surface. "The moss and the wild have been good to your hooves," he said, glancing up. "They are strong hooves."

I was relieved to hear that. I still said nothing, but hung my head over his shoulder while standing on three feet as he worked. It was, of course, common knowledge that unicorns have good hard hooves, for never has a piece of iron been brought near them since the beginning of time. When man discovered that special iron shoes could be fashioned to support and maintain a horse's hoof, the softer, more tender feet had been saved from much pain. But the unicorns had never needed this sort of aid. They were not above distress, but the afflictions that assail horses' hooves do not strike a unicorn so readily. But I had to admit that running for weeks in the desert had sorely taxed even my feet.

My two-legger worked steadily while the other two stood by chatting kindly. Once he broke in with a little reproachful, "Nutkin told me you were angry with him."

I tossed my head haughtily. "He slandered my name. What else should I be?"

"Forgiving?" The grey eyes flickered up, their depths shining blue again beneath the sea-foam round their shadowed edges. He dropped his eyes, their gaze having sufficiently silenced me, and went back to work. "Nutkin knows nothing of your world," he went on softly. "He lives in simplicity and, in some measure, stupidity. He doesn't understand you, and what he doesn't understand he doesn't like. That is the way of wild things, Darjeeling Khan. You must know that."

My ears fell back against my skull. I jerked my hoof out of his grasp and stood with it dripping warm water on the floor. "I should have known you would be on _his_ side. You are one of them."

The blue eyes became that grey-white again, full of pity. He grasped my leg with a strong hand and said, "It is the fool who denies justice. Give me your hoof, khan."

I relinquished a portion of my pride and surrendered my hoof. All the while Minkle was sitting beneath me, playing idly with the water in the bowl for, being a cat, he liked warmth, even though he continued to shake the water droplets off his paws every minute or so. It was not long before the stone floor was as speckled as a peewit's egg. "Here," Michaelmas said suddenly, stooping down to catch hold of him. "You're getting all wet."

"Don't stop him," I heard myself saying. Michaelmas straightened and gazed back at me in surprise. I shifted my ears around, displeased with myself. Minkle went on playing without realizing what was about. "Don't stop him. He's doing no harm."

Michaelmas gave a little nod and turned to the door. Pausing to glance back over her shoulder, she swept us all with her purple-shadowed eyes—my two-legger, Minkle, and myself—before trotting off and out of sight.

I dropped my eyes back to my two-legger's work, and it seemed all the anger toward him had gone out of me as quickly as a snuffed candle. For a while the only sound was his rhythmic breathing and Minkle's gentle miaows. "She is unclaimed," my two-legger broke the silence.

"And so she should be," I replied. "I can't imagine anyone having a claim on her."

"Not even yourself?" my two-legger asked, raising his eyes. His brows did a curious twitch downward to emphasize the question.

I pulled my head up and shook it hard. "Certainly _not_ myself." Of course, I couldn't put into words why it was certainly not myself. I played with the idea that it was because I was a foreigner, then because I was so bitter, and finally because she was a lonely goddess that I would remember all my days standing on the hilltop, her hoof pawing the air, beautiful eyes glowing in the light-and-shadow forest. A fragile, glassy goddess.

"Well, even so, you might be a little less rough around the edges, since she is a lady," my two-legger told me. "And she is coming back tonight. I invited her to supper. Now, there." He put my hoof down and rose, looking at it carefully. "Feel better?"

"Mmm, yes." I shifted, tapped it, and flicked the excess water away.

There was a little pause around us. I found I could not quite meet my two-legger's eyes as he watched me steadily from under his sloping brows. Everything else was faded and hazed compared to that stare; the light in the window fanned out in a white ring over the table, the soft firelight crept along the floor. Only those eyes burned with any clarity, and it was almost frightening.

"Why did you leave?" he asked me suddenly.

Of all the questions he could have asked, I wished he hadn't asked this one. I turned my head, throat constricted with emotion. "I thought you'd gone away for good," I replied wretchedly.

There was that silence again. I knew he was looking at me—beasts can always feel when a two-legger is looking at them, it's just a power all two-leggers have about them—but I couldn't look back. Then I heard his voice from some place, perhaps inside my own head. "Darjeeling Khan," he was saying, "when you know me a little better, you will understand that I leave no one unhealed and unbefriended. Where there is a need, as the Lion gives me the strength, I will meet it."

I could only nod wretchedly, my throat tight, my belly a wash of agony. But he seemed to think that was all that needed saying, so he asked me to tell him, if I could, who I was and where I had come from. At this point Minkle stopped his splashing and sat still to listen for as long as his attention could hold. And I told them both, carefully, piecing it together between the reality and the dream, the converging bits of memory from my life in the jungle and my life in slavery. I had not seen Minkle's eyes so huge in wonder, nor my two-legger's so narrow in concentration. I could feel, by and by, the spirit of my story catch me up and it became a web I was weaving for them, a story not of myself, but of some other unicorn with my name, someone distant in the half-forgotten ashes of the past, and I was the wind, stirring up those ashes again. It left a strange taste in my mouth.

_Darjeeling came to his reeling senses in a sunlit court, the startled flight of birds making shrieking arrows of amber across the face of the blazing sun. Frightened, angry, he clambered to his wobbly legs and whirling round on one hind leg, striking at—anything! Then ropes flew out of the sunlight and struck him in the neck, in the face, in the eyes. One nearly wound itself around his horn but he ducked and cavorted enough to get it off. Now he could see his attackers: two-leggers in murmuring white robes with heavy ropes in hand, slinking in a malicious orbit round him. Out of their dark faces gleamed eyes white and ebony, dilated with wonder at his beauty. _

_Enraged at the ropes, Darjeeling lunged in among them, throwing all his weight into his plunge. He felt a sternum crack around his mighty horn, heard the agonized cry in his ears. Tossing back his head, he pulled the two-legger up with him, only to fling him away with another idle toss. Ropes flew at him; he reared. This was the battle-dance! His finely-shaped body contorted into a living machine of war, all his wind-birthed swiftness burning with the desire to live and to kill. _

_His hooves shattered a two-legger's skull and, still blood-drunk in his fury, Darjeeling pounded him into the dusty courtyard. He was airborne, turning over and around like a cat. But despite his agility and fury, still the ropes came flying, it was only a matter of time before one landed. And land one did. Darjeeling was in the middle of a leap when the hemp-hand slipped like a bad dream around his neck and hauled tight. The wind shut off, as did his scream. He was pulled nearly to the ground, his legs thrashing madly in the air. No one dared approach him, but gradually more ropes were added to his neck, his legs, his chest, until at last he was down, limping like a dying fish. _

_Kill me now! the miserable thought ran though his head. He stared one-eyed up at the beating sun and silhouetted heads clustered over him. Incoherent voices chattered all around like monkeys. He let out a scream of panic and rage. _

_Someone brought the saw and someone else was unlucky enough to be picked to sit on the unicorn's head while the precious horn was taken off. Murder burned in Darjeeling's pale green eyes as the two-legger approached. Flanks heaving like a mare's in labour, the unicorn gathered ever scrap of strength left. When the saw began to bite, he held his scream in—he would need the power of it to get free. And when he knew it was time it seemed to the two-leggers as if a mountain had just been birthed out of a sleeping plain. The unicorn shot upward, forward, flinging them all aside as a lion flings away lambs. The ropes whipped in the wind: bloody, dusty banners of tattered victory. The cry coming from the unicorn's throat was a roar. _

_Then he was off. Without check he raced blindly for the end of the enclosure and flung himself bodily through the door. It shattered in a dismayed splinter of wood around him. All who saw him screamed and ran, convinced a furious demigod had been let loose among their midst. And like black-winged lightning with the two-leggers hot after him, Darjeeling galloped for freedom. He was so disoriented and lost that he did not run his fastest, but his heart was in the racing and he knew he would get away. He had to get away! _

_He thundered through the labyrinth streets, ignoring screams, crying, shouts, barks, every obstacle in his path he laughed at. I am Khan! he cried in his heart. I will not dishonour my people! _

_Down the huge hill he raced. Far away, over the walls, he could see a huge expanse of yellow and tawny. That way was north, he knew it for certain. And north had always meant safety to him, whether in the jungle or in the mountains, whatever the occasion, north was safety. So that way he turned his horn like the outstretched symbol of a compass. His legs swallowed the ground, his heart rejoiced in the running. Somehow he never knew the blood coursing down his face, masking his beauty and creating a cruel, macabre death-horse pounding through the fringes of people's lives that day. _

_The run through the desert was a nightmare. The distant sensation of northern safety continued to flutter around him as he plodded along, desperate to attain it, but he was lost in the wasteland. How long the journey was, he never knew, only that heat exchanged itself for cold, for heat again. Sun gave way for moon and stars, only to come back again all too soon. _

_Somehow he found the pass. In his caged racing along the unrelenting mountain walls he stumbled on the fissure between them and, desperate for any way of escape, shot up it as fast as his cracked hooves would take him. The rattle of his going echoed mockingly around the cavernous walls. Night set in by the time he broke free and stumbled through a trickling river up the first, the very first, patch of grass he had walked on since coming into this world. But he could not stop! He was not safe yet. He took a brief mouthful and hurried on, stumbling in the darkness. _

"And it was all curious because I never could tell quite where I was, only that I wasn't where I wanted to be," I concluded with a sigh. "And even now, I don't know that I'm there…"

My two-legger nodded, gazed into the fire, and nodded again. The warm glow of the firelight filled his face with a calm, contemplative spirit, bringing up the sharply handsome features of his face. "It was magic," he said at length.

I pricked up my ears. "I was thinking that's what it was. It tasted like magic. And it tasted horrid."

My two-legger gave the fire a wry smile. "Yes, even I know what evil magic tastes like." He gave me his full attention again and smiled broader. "But you are healing, and you are quite safe, I can assure you of that. No one from the land south of the desert will think to come looking for you here."

"But they saw which way I went," I objected. "They chased me for miles across the desert!"

With a shake of his head, the other replied, "Nevertheless, they _will not_ look for you. I promise you that."

_I promise you that…_ Trust, faith, belonging. I stared into the fire in turn as though to find an answer there. But the fire was busy at its own tasks, leaping and cavorting over itself in its mad attempts to gnaw away the logs beneath it. That was how I felt. I felt so dizzy with my whirling, like a leaf in an autumn storm. The sensation of my unbelonging sat ill and heavy in my stomach, a constant weight pulling me back, pulling me down. I wondered if I was destined to never set my hooves still for long, to trot round and round the world forever, always searching for a home just out of my reach. It would never, never end, and on my grave let all creation write an epitaph and let the stone speak forever, as forever as my wandering.

_No; the world will not break,_

_Time will not stop._

_Do not for the dregs mistake_

_The first bitter drop._

_When first the collar galls_

_Tired horses know_

_Stable's not near. Still falls_

_The whip. There's far to go._

A hot, mad tear ran out of my eye and onto the flagstones. It shattered with no more noise than a cloud's thought, but in its salty sphere it held a sea of sorrow. No one could make me belong, not my two-legger, not Minkle, not Michaelmas. It was nothing of their fault, the fault was all mine. I simply, naturally, didn't belong here. The magic wasn't over with me. It would hang like a cloud over me to the end of my alienated days and one day bring me down. I was, in a word, cursed.

Minkle got down off my two-legger's lap and loped to the doorway. "Come see the sunset, Darjeeling," he pleaded. "It's so pretty on the spider's webs. See, look!"

I sighed and went to him. And yes, the spider-web was beautiful, the sky bright, the wind soft. But this was all mockery. It was as though I were blind. "Tell me about it, Minkle," I begged in turn. "What's it like?"

Not knowing why I asked, he quickly and happily obliged. "Well," he said, "it's like lots of stars, only really little stars, all strung up on a thread. I think the spider must be really clever to be able to do that."

"She must be indeed."

"Only she's got the sun to help her," he went on, glancing up with his big precious eyes. Mockery again. I found myself gazing back at him with something like the pride a stallion feels in watching the foal he has fathered. I looked away, ashamed of my foolishness.

My two-legger had come up beside us. "And the clouds, Minkle," he prompted gently. "What are they?"

"Dandelion fluff!" he cried, and I was left confused. "It's dandelion fluff! And the fluff off the sheep in the meadows. And—and maybe a little of my grandmother's pillow, too, I'm not sure. I wonder how it got up there."

"The wind," my two-legger dropped his voice to a whisper.

Minkle sat up and poised on his hind legs, eagerly listening for the wind. I felt it blow through my forelock. For a while Minkle was silent, listening, hesitating, dreaming. "It's angels," he said finally.

My two-legger looked round, surprised. "Is it?"

Minkle was gazing in a little trance into the distance. "Yes, I can hear them singing. They're so sad. No wait, that's Darjeeling. The angels aren't sad, they're—I don't know what. I don't know what it is. It's sort of happy, but not really happy. Happy like a river in the spring when it's swollen and roaring. Really big and dangerous. That sort of happy."

The curiosity and wonderment that ran like swallows' shadows over my two-legger's face made me strain in like turn for the wind and the voices and the strange happiness that was like a swollen river in springtime. But I was too old, too foolish, too dull. It was for the child to hear, not me, and once again I felt the breath of a door closing, a door closing and leaving me outside.

In the stillness we heard a pattering, and who was it but Nutkin that went scampering by. When he paused and looked at me I gave back a mournful gaze, the most I knew how to do at an apology. He dropped back on all fours and ran up a tree out of sight.

"That was not very chivalrous of him," remarked my two-legger.

"It is my fault," I replied heavily. "I made as if to kill him when we met; I didn't think he would come close now."

My two-legger nodded. The little muscles in his jaw and neck twitched as he turned his head and straightened to look at the darkening eastern sky. Far away stars were coming out. The wind was beginning to drop. We three stood still until the dusk was thick around us like a dragon's dream in the shadows of time. Crickets began singing in the grass, a lone nightingale was tuning up. All was soft and deep and lonesome. A chill wind replaced the soft one of twilight.

It was then that the call came. Neither my two-legger nor the cat heard it or felt it, but I did. It was an old, old sensation, one revived in my dream. I bolted upright and swung my head westward, limbs stiff with anticipation.

My two-legger set his hand on my shoulder. "What is it, Darjeeling?"

"Wolves," I hissed. "Wolves in the greenwood!" I broke into a trot, eyes aflame. It was neither wind nor sound that brought the wolf to me, but the senses within that were triggered by a far-off presence. It was the way of the unicorn-kind.

"Wait!" I heard Minkle cry. "Wait for me!"

I looked back over my shoulder at the ragged little catkin. "No!" I said sternly. "You mustn't come with me."

He looked crushed, sitting halfway between the door and my hind hooves. "But—but—please?"

The call became audible now. The howls drifted over the distance like smoke. "No," I said, deepening the tone of my voice. "You must stay _here_."

My two-legger came out of the cottage with a sword at his side. "Minkle," he called, "get you back into the house. Do not come out until we return."

The catkin gazed at me with big tears dropping out of his eyes. I was on the verge of flight, anxious to be off. "Please!" he begged me, pattering the last distance to touch my leg. "Please, I want to come too!"

"No!" I cried angrily. "You can't come with me!"

Minkle shrank under my wrath into a little fluffy ball of fear and sorrow. I was never good at showing my feelings in a kind way. I was hurt that he was hurt, angry that he was upset. He murped out one last, "Please?"

The howls were getting louder. "No!" I thundered, turning on him. My hooves pounded the turf around his head as I leaned down to shout into his face. "You can't come with me! I would never forgive myself if I lost you! Now, go back to the house!"

He got up and scrambled away, tail between his legs. I stood watching him go, tears running down my face. "I love you," I whispered softly. "I love you, my little cat-son."

"Come," my two-legger called. "There isn't time."

I turned and barred his way. "Get on my back," I urged. He looked dumbfounded at me, for once completely speechless. Again I lost my temper. "Get on my back, sir! Is my back some holy shrine that you can't touch? Get on it, I say!"

He shifted his sword more easily to his left and set his hands on the flat of my back. With a deft leap he swung astride; I could tell at once that he was an able rider, and as all unicorns have gaits as smooth as milk I paid no more attention to him, but raced off through the growing dark, following the haunting notes of the wolf-pack on the hunt. And through that wild night that was like a dream, the unicorn that was once Darjeeling Seymour Khan came back to life, a glancing, living shadow through the darkness. Alive for a night.


	6. Chapter 6

Foreigner

**Chapter Six**

When the living heart is in the running, there is no creature that can outpace the unicorn. So I ran, even with the unaccustomed weight on my back, faster than a dream through time. The drum of my hooves echoed in that dark forest that night; creatures turned their heads, their eyes sparking as they leapt out of my way, their distant, half-terrified cries falling into my wake. I could feel it in my blood: the hunt! No matter what Michaelmas had said, _I _was guardian of the wood. _I _was Khan! The whole world was mine to defend and to cradle, to urge up on its shaky legs.

What goes through a person's mind when the war-blood is pounding, that is hard to say. It was as fierce as love, but lasted longer; it bore me on over the hills and valleys under the stars and pine-boughs until, at last, I reached the baleful clearing and plunged through the air down into the midst of the marauders. The weight left my back; I became aware of my two-legger rolling to the ground and rising, sword shimmering in my body's light. Everything became sharp as ice in my mind. I saw the mournful, frail figures cast about the ground: Narnians like Nutkin, larger animals striped black and white with their enemies' blood still shining on their claws and snouts, cats like Minkle, a lamb or two with their haunches torn off. And in the gloom I perceived the drum-beat of hearts. Through the darkness, under the pines, I saw those cruel teeth gleam at me, those surprised, wicked eyes narrowing at me, sizing me up. It was only a moment, only a brief lull in which the clearing and invader drew off to breathe before plunging in again.

So soon I heard the shrieking battle-cry split the air. In the darkness my two-legger and I, poised for the fight, saw a glowing pearl figure dashing in and out with the brindle wolves around its flanks. She reared, dancing on her hind hooves, lashing with her forehooves like a thousand furious knives. Her horn was soiled and her face bloodied. But before her cry could sound again in the wood, my curses exploded, shaking the ground. I shot through the air and met the first wolf head on. He fared the worst; I slit him down the spine and shook his ragged, reeking body off. My two-legger was up to his neck in the dogs, ripping them away with his ravening blade. Flank to flank I found myself with Michaelmas, mouthfuls of fur dropping like fog around me. I ripped and tore and beat and sliced the wolves, all the while—I didn't know it until later—screaming at them as though they were Sori and Nasha, treacherous fiends from the pit. Death filled my eyes, my nose, my body. I made rugs of the wolves. I made the clearing remember until the end of time what Darjeeling Seymour Khan had done that night.

Then it was over. Waves of heat flooded over my body as I stood, trembling, in the dim light of the moon. My throat was raw with my roaring, my head aching with the strain I had put upon my horn. But the moon was cold and gentle. It hung untouched above me, and somehow its light made my head that much clearer. Across the clearing my two-legger rose from beneath a dead wolf and came toward me, a wry, triumphant grin on his face. "It is good?" he asked softly when he was within whispering distance.

I looked around at the littler bodies, their innocent hides shredded in the sheer wanton pleasure of death. They had been avenged. "It is good," I panted.

"Darjeeling." A tiny, bell-note voice broke the stillness. Michaelmas stood quivering on her slender deer-like legs, gazing at me through the moon-veil. She gave her tail the smallest flicker, her eyes the gentlest shimmer of gratefulness. I saw red on her coat: her own blood and that of the wolves. Somehow it struck a knife through my heart to see her shining coat soiled like that. It made me angry all over again.

My two-legger's voice came through to me from the distance, my reply following clearly after:

"_She is unclaimed."_

"_And so she should be!"_

The spell was broken. I lowered my head with a weary sigh, knowing all over again that my goddess would remain a far-off dream to me. It was bitter, but somehow, I knew, I would find a way to make it good. I had Minkle now. Stepping over the wolves, I made to go.

"Darjeeling." The voice came again, this time closer. I turned and saw that she had come up beside me, her deep eyes confused and hurt. I wanted to cry out. _Can I do nothing but hurt people? I am cursed!_ She sidled round and made room for my two-legger to walk between us. "Darjeeling," she whispered in an awed tone, "you were amazing."

I let my forelock fall over my face. "I hate the wolves, the wild, wicked wolves. It was duty that compelled me to kill."

"Then I thank your sense of duty," Michaelmas replied, giving herself a shake. Little flecks of blood flew off and fell, accidentally, upon me. I shied at the touch, then felt good to know I was carrying the blood instead of her. "And they—they will sing of you," she went on, lifting her eyes shyly under her lashes. She seemed just like the uncertain little mare that had crept through the dawning that morning in search of me. "You will be their avenger, the others, the ones that got away."

"They know nothing of me," I replied heavily.

"_I_ know of you," said Michaelmas. She took a trot forward, then stopped, cheeks pink. She swallowed and added almost hastily in a quick, kingfisher tone, "_I_ will sing of you." Then she hastened off eastward toward the cottage while my two-legger and I continued on at a slower pace, pausing only to wash ourselves at a little burn.

"I'm not deaf and I'm not blind," I replied to my two-legger's steady, wry grin.

He wiped his hands off on the seat of his pants. "I didn't say you were. Still, I thought it highly amusing that _she_ is unclaimed, but she seems to have claimed someone."

I stomped impulsively. "She's foolish! She doesn't know what I am."

The grey came back to the fierce blue eyes. _Eyes of a warrior,_ I considered. _Eyes of something godlike, something noble. I wonder from what stock and house he springs._ "Darjeeling Khan," he said slowly, falling into step beside me, "admit to yourself that _you_ don't know what you are. No! I'm not going to whip up some trumpery about your soul and denial and whatnot. But the simple truth is that you're so bitter about being an alien that every attempt the people make—every little gesture—at inviting you in goes either disregarded or destroyed! You opened up to Minkle because he's simpleminded. He doesn't understand the head or the tail, he doesn't know there is a difference between you and Michaelmas, he simply loves you. Darjeeling, for once," my two-legger shut his eyes, his feet moving swiftly, urgently, as well as though he were looking where he went, "for once, realize that, while we're not simpleminded like Minkle, we're trying to open up to you too. We know the head and the tail of it, but—"

"It's almost dawn already," I broke in wearily. How swiftly the night had flown by! And my two-legger ceased talking. He laid a heavy arm over my withers and together we went back to his little house on the knoll. All was quiet as it is before the dawn-wind rises. All was deep and still as though the world was holding its breath—morning comes with a crash, and all creation holds itself in readiness for that entry of the sun. And in that between place, after night has been spent and before morning comes, I had time to think. I had cut him off not to be rude, but because my mind was awhirl with thoughts that his words just muddled all the more. I had to think. But while I thought the leering white eyes of the black-skinned two-leggers would come between me and the cottage, between me and Minkle, between me and home. The wolves slunk around the edges of my consciousness, always watching, waiting for me to let down my guard.

I paused when I caught the scent of horses ahead. Hastily I told my two-legger, and after a moment of confusion he replied with, "Oh yes, of course!" and he set off alone. I went after him warily; I didn't want another glance like Gunnfus' or Nutkin's, but in a lonely way I was eager to see Minkle again. I climbed up the knoll, skirting the woodshore, eyeing the troop of gaily-attired horses on the lawn. They were tired as if they had come far. Voices sounded inside the cottage. I crept closer, my shadow beginning to come out of the night behind me; in the east a silver line hung beneath the smiling crescent moon. And as there was commonality between unicorn and horse, I inquired of them, "What are you doing here?"

The first shook his mane and looked round at me. His voice was thick and low, not like the voice of Michaelmas or Minkle, those who knew two-leggers' speech. His was the true, unadulterated horse-tongue. "Who knows?" he replied. "But we'll be off soon, at any rate. Come and gone like leaves in the wind."

A chestnut raised her head over the group. "But it's not bad," she told me. "I'd rather be on the move with the wind in my ears than standing still like a hobby-horse. It's not bad, that."

They didn't say anything about my coat or the horn between my brows, though I could tell the sensation of my being unicorn swept over them like a warm summer wind. They shuddered and felt the difference, but seemed, for all my majesty—a unicorn can't help his majesty—glad of my company.

"Certainly not bad," the first horse said with a low grunt of approval.

"And," put in a handsome black with a star on his forehead, "it helps to have a good master. I say, one can take long journeys and rough weather if one's got a good master. It makes all the difference in the world. We've got a good life."

The others murmured their agreement and went back to cropping grass. I turned away, shamed at their simplistic happiness. I almost didn't dare go to the cottage, only by now Minkle had realized I was there. My heart lifted a little as he came running across the wet grass, scattering dewy gossamer all the way, crying for joy as he leapt and wrapped himself around my legs. His warm little body filled me with pride because, somehow, he was my own. I smiled, nuzzled him, wondered at him.

_A unicorn with a cat for a son_. I eyed the world with contempt; let them accuse me of this, I didn't care! Minkle belonged to me, and bending down, I told him so. "You're my very own, Minkle," I whispered into his ears. "You're my very own and—I love you so much."

He wiped his nose over my knees and hugged me. His little orphaned heart nearly burst—as did mine—and I realized he had been just as unbelonging as myself.

In the doorway strode my two-legger, his keen eyes their blue again, lustrous as dawn began to break. His hair lifted from his forehead, dancing over his brows in the wind, and he smiled at the paradox on the lawn. "Darjeeling Khan," he called across to me. I came, Minkle on my back. Setting a hand on my shoulder, he said, "Darjeeling Khan, I am going down to the capitol today. I would that you come with me, if it is anywhere in your heart to do so."

The first two fingers of cold unbelonging touched my heart again. The light in my eyes went out as I turned and watched the dumb horses at grass. _To be even like them, that would be good,_ I thought. _Servanthood would have a sweeter taste in my mouth than this severed drifting I am caught in now. _"Yes," I said finally without any spirit in my tone. "It is in my heart."

But still the fear of a stranger thumped with the blood in my throat as we approached the horses and made to depart. Minkle would come with me; I would have it no other way. He was full of excitement and wonder while I—I was afraid. I shivered for a moment—for the dawn was quite cold—and almost went back. But then a pearl came by and turned my gaze. It was Michaelmas, hovering on the woodshore not too far away, her purple-and-golden eyes aglow. Her ears turned and turned to take in all the sounds of the two-leggers setting out, of the horses leaving their grass behind, of the thoughts inside herself. She was so beautiful there, the dim autumnal sunlight beginning to shimmer around her. And suddenly she was no longer the cold and distant goddess I thought she was. Across the distance I could feel her racing heart, her longing, her pride.

"I will come again," I whispered, letting the wind carry my words. Her ears stood up and her legs shivered. The wells of her eyes grew wide. "Wait for me," I told her. "I will come again."

One of the two-leggers broke the still dawn. "Come along, King Edmund! Your brother is needing you."

My two-legger's laugh sounded over the knoll like the morning itself. "I am wishing my cottage farewell. It is a full place."

I trotted along in their wake with Minkle on my back, and I knew what he meant. It was full of good times: of silvery, ghostly laughter from the past, of laughing buds yet to be born.

We topped the road and began our descent. The trees were yet iron-cold and the dew was becoming hoarfrost almost as soon as it gathered. Autumn was hanging all around, its breath still yet bronzen. Across the chilly white fields darted a grey titmouse. My road stretched out long and uncertain before me, but even in the coldness my heart was warm. I was alive. I had found my belonging.

**The End**


	7. Epilogue

Epilogue

**Epilogue**

The sixth chapter did say "The End" at the end, and it was the end. But this is afterward. Whether more lies out there for Darjeeling or not, I can't say. One part of me wishes there were more, while another says, "No, it's over. Let the reader imagine all that comes next." But if I did that, it would almost be like having the reader make a fanfiction for a fanfiction. I suppose, though, that a fanfiction that takes you deeper into the story, and then deeper into itself, is on the road to being a good fanfiction. It is not for me to say whether Darjeeling's story was good fanfiction. Mostly I desired it to be good literature, which is another thing entirely.

If you have read this far in this epilogue, congratulations, you have more devotion that I do. At this point I would like to explain—or defend, whichever you choose—Darjeeling's existence.

Many people think of unicorns as simply mythological creatures, no more to be believed in than fairytales. But fairytales, I'll warrant you, are simply a clever way of dressing up a magnificent truth; fairytales bring back the child-like in us, and are not to be thought of as childish. So unicorns ought to be given a second chance in this age of suspicion and scepticism. Historical accounts remain of unicorns, widely described and widely adhered-to. Granted, the prim, magical figure that graces many an ancient tapestry has no room in the world of mundane mammals. Horses of themselves seem to possess a sort of magic of their own, but not the sort we often attribute to unicorns. Unicorns are, if they truly ever _were_—now extinct. If any of you believe I am simply making a personal statement and that this has nothing to do with Lewis fanfiction, try googling, "The Late Passenger," and you'll see I'm not alone.

That said (I accuse no one of unbelief; it's not as if we speak of God and Man here) I'll move swiftly on to Darjeeling proper. He is, of course, a fantastical creature. Some confusion has arisen as to his birthplace. Kashmir is a province of India high up in the mountains. Darjeeling is a type of tea they grow there, a type of tea that, when brewed, is quite bitter. I love Darjeeling tea but, as Michaelmas found, it is hard to take without plenty of sugar.

The fact that Darjeeling is of a green hue caused many the double-take, I'm sure. Artistic license and also a fond tip-of-the-hat to Twinings, the company from London that produces my Darjeeling tea. Their symbol and packaging of this tea was as follows: a vibrant green valley beneath an equally vibrant green sky, ringed with gold, and printed on an ebony-black box. If you have read this far, you know the secret now.

Edmund. This story was not explicitly about Edmund, hence my decision to weave him into the patchwork carefully and elusively. If you know your Chronicles it will not be hard to pick him out and know who he is, but Darjeeling was a complete foreigner to our darling land of Narnia, and therefore knew nothing of its kings. Edmund was nothing but a kind shoulder to rest his head on. And what friend needs to be more than that? Here, in the little corner of the story Edmund possesses, I hoped to show the _make_ of a king and a man, not just the glitter and pomp of Cair Paravel, nor the royal dais adorned with its monarchs. It is a man that makes a king, not a king that makes a man.

If there are any more adventures to be had between Darjeeling, Minkle, Michaelmas and Edmund, they lie off in the future and I can't see them yet. Perhaps one day I'll wake up at three o'clock in the morning with a revelation, and promptly forget it until several days later. Life is like that.

But those of you who have read this far, have reviewed, or even _enjoyed_ "Foreigner!" I salute you and thank you.

In Christ,

Siberian Christmas


End file.
